Poetry, War, and the Places They Meet

Editor’s note: As previously noted on this blog, April is National Poetry Month! This essay originally appeared in the April 2020 on-line edition of Consequence Magazine (recently relaunched as Consequence Forum).

No one gets into poetry for fame, glory, or money. As a “recovering journalist” (that’s a joke), I often quip that I’ve finally found a vocation that pays less than newspaper reporter: that of “citizen-soldier-poet.”

After years of writing and editing for newsstand consumer “how-to” magazines, concurrent with a 20-year career in the Iowa Army National Guard, I rediscovered poetry at a 2011 weekend writing workshop for military veterans. Hosted by a non-profit organization called “Writing My Way Back Home,” it was conducted on the campus of the University of Iowa, Iowa City.

After a 50-minute session reading soldierly poems—I don’t recall specific titles, so I’ll mention here Wilfred Owen’s 1917 “Dulce et Decorum Est” and Rudyard Kipling’s 1890 “Tommy” as two titles I now use in my own work with veterans—we were prompted to write freely for 10 minutes: “Write about smells, sounds, and other sense-based memories you associate with your experiences with the military.”

(Here’s a quick pro tip: Framing the prompt that way works for “civilian” audiences as well. After all, as the calendar flips toward nearly 20 years of war, every one of us—taxpayer, voter, citizen—has at least some connection with the culture and consequences of war. )

A few months earlier in 2011, I embedded as a freelance journalist with a brigade of Iowa citizen-soldiers deployed to Afghanistan. There, I’d again experienced the familiar tang of diesel-truck fumes, the staccato-chop of helicopters overhead, and the lulling background buzz of Uncle Sam’s electrical generators. But I had also encountered the frictions of changed contexts and perspectives.

As a member of the media, for example, I was prohibited from wearing a camouflage uniform or carrying a weapon—foreign concepts to any graduate of Army basic training. More than once during those weeks, I woke up in my bunk, sweating and panicked, hands flailing in the dark, trying to find my AWOL rifle. You think old habits die hard? Boot camp habits die harder. Call it the Ghost of Drill Sergeants Past.

So, at the workshop, I wrote my first war poem. It was about a hug.

The hug had bothered me for months. It was not a big event. It was not “news.” It was a small and unworthy thing—insufficient materiel, I thought, for even a blog post or postcard back home. And yet, it irritated my brain with the persistence of grit in an oyster. When I first arrived in Afghanistan, my former brigade commander—a man I respected and still feared, and who commanded the lives of 3,000 of my fellow Iowans—had greeted me not with a handshake, nor with a salute (I was now a civilian, after all), but with a hug.

I had spent months trying to figure out what that meant.

It took a poem for me to figure it out.

Author and Iraq War veteran Jason Poudrier (Red Fields, 2012) once told me about how he uses the practice of writing poetry to freeze moments, and to hold them up to inspection from different angles. Poetry, he said, allows for metaphor, uncertainty, contradiction, nuance. One thing can mean many things. Memories can be acknowledged—even honored—without having to be resolved. Then, after they are written down, they can be placed on a shelf—perhaps to be forgotten, perhaps to be reflected upon again later. Perhaps, even to be published, and shared with others.

The words that resulted from 10 minutes of workshop-prompted reflection were later polished and published as “Normally, a serious man”:

Normally a serious man,

the brigade commander gives you a hug

and later a coin.

You keep turning up like a bad penny, he says.

You have followed him

across deserts and oceans.

First in uniform, now out of it.

You dress yourself these days.

Friends downrange frequently call attention

to your color-filled wardrobe.

You are only following the rules, you tell them.

Camouflage, according to the Army, might make you a target.

The colonel’s coins are numbered.

Two hundred and forty-nine have come before,

but you are a first:

once part of the tribe, but no longer in the fight.

You showed up like Justice,

who also jumped on the plane late.

He got killed while pinned down 

trying to secure a helicopter crash.

You are here to share in stories like that.

The coin is worthless, of course,

but it will pay your way back across the water,

once you have found yourself

at war.

“Why the hug?” you ask your buddies later.

It is because you are like a puppy, they say.

You remind the Old Man of better days.

You are no longer dangerous.

You are a puppy.

You are a penny.

You are home.

In 2019, I co-edited a Military Writers Guild-sponsored anthology, Why We Write: Craft Essays on Writing War. Our contributors included poets and playwrights, novelists and educators, soldiers and sailors, think-tankers, historians, and more. Each was a practitioner of writing about war and national security topics, across various genres, platforms, and literary forms.

In one essay, “Recovering the Rhythm of War,” author and veteran Bill McCloud told about how he generated a 2017 collection of poems after re-reading a stack of 52 letters—words he had originally written as a U.S. soldier serving in Vietnam in the years 1968-1969. “When we first return from war, many of us choose either to not talk about it at all (for a variety of reasons), or to talk about it strictly by describing our own personal experiences. We make no attempt, early on, to fit ourselves into the big picture,” McCloud wrote. “I was ready to fit myself, the everyman, into the puzzle.”

My part-time military career was full of disappointments and joys, but it was hardly the stuff of movies and recruiting posters. I’d been an average soldier—a middle-manager in uniform. I was never the smartest, strongest, or highest-ranking person in the room. My Army job involved pushing buttons, connecting wires, and delivering messages. I never fired my weapon in anger. I did sling a few sandbags at home in Iowa. And I got a “combat patch” for overseas peacekeeping duty. Still, as a National Guard member, I was proud to serve my community and my country. Through my service, I had experiences and made friends I’d never have otherwise encountered.

For me, poetry has been one way to assemble those fragments of memory, to add personal and historical contexts to them, and to extract potential meaning from them.

When I read Owen’s words from 1917, denouncing the platitude he calls “the old Lie”—that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country—I think about the betrayal some of today’s veterans feel when hearing about peace talks with the Taliban.

And when I read Kipling’s words about how civil society fails its military veterans—the 19th century equivalent to a meme about “Thank You for Your Service”—I think about how my fellow citizens spent a year “building capacity” on behalf of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, but returned to unemployment, uncertainty, and eroding civil rights at home.

And when I read McCloud’s essay and new poetry from the Vietnam War, I connect my own “everyman” military experiences to a larger societal puzzle: We are each part of a long narrative. We are each boots on the ground. We are all in this together.

Poetry makes this conversation possible. I’ve seen it during poetry readings and book events. I’ve also seen it during breakfast, while reading the social media feeds of my fellow poets. Recent war poetry from U.S. military service members and families is as rich and varied as that from World Wars I and II, as well as wars in Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf—and the Cold War years between.

Thanks to the Internet, war poetry has never been more accessible. As a start, consider this friendly barrage of verse from modern airmen, soldiers, Marines, spouses, and others:

• “Here, Bullet” by Brian Turner
• “Meeting in Amman” by Farzana Marie
• “leaving empty”  by Randy Brown
• “The Stars and Stripes is Free” by Eric Chandler
• “Happy Birthday, Army” by Abby E. Murray
• “This is a Test” by Nicole Goodwin
• “We are Not Your Heroes” by Jenny Pacanowski
• “The Burn Pit Detail at FOB Cobra” by Hugh Martin
• “jokes with civilians” by Anna Weaver 
• “Shush” by Maurice Decaul
• “The Throwing Gap” by Karen Skolfield
• “Armed Services Editions” by Jehanne Dubrow
• “Transmigration” by Pamela Hart
• “Widows Receive Free Tickets to the Birthday Ball” by Lisa Stice
• “Another Planet” by Dunya Mikhail
• “Retrieving the Guns” by Kate Gaskin

Poetry opens up the spaces for mutual empathy and understanding, for building metaphorical bridges across the equally metaphorical “civil-military gap.” So, military service members, veterans, families, and others: Write or read a war poem or two. Read it aloud. Share it with others. Talk about it.

April is National Poetry Month. Have you hugged a war poet today?

*****

Randy Brown embedded with his former Iowa Army National Guard unit as a civilian journalist in Afghanistan, May-June 2011. A 20-year veteran with a previous overseas deployment, he subsequently authored the 2015 poetry collection Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire. He also co-edited the 2019 Military Writers Guild-sponsored anthology Why We Write: Craft Essays on Writing War. Since 2015, he has been the poetry editor at As You Were, the literary journal of the non-profit organization Military Experience & the Arts. As “Charlie Sherpa,” he blogs about poetry at www.fobhaiku.com, and about military-themed writing at www.aimingcircle.org.

War Poetry Redux: The 'Blue Streak' Strikes Again!

Editors at the literary journal "As You Were," published by the 501(c)3 non-profit organization Military Experience & the Arts, have published a special spring 2018 edition of the poetry journal "Blue Streak."

The issue features 27 poems from 25 military veterans and family members, and can be read on-line FREE here at this link.

The special project takes its name from a legacy poetry journal, which published its first and only edition in 2013. In 2014, most of the organization's fiction, non-fiction, and poetry journals were consolidated under the "As You Were" literary journal title. The latter is currently published on-line twice annually.

"When 2017 poetry submissions exceeded our capacity to adequately honor and celebrate in the pages of As You Were the poets who had shared their words and works with us, we decided to bring back—at least temporarily—the Blue Streak nameplate out of cold storage," poetry editor Randy Brown writes in a short introduction to the issue. "We don’t know whether or when it will ever be back—our regular poetry features will continue with the next issue of As You Were—but we had a lot of fun putting it together."

A website page describes the organization's publishing history and philosophy:

Our title ["As You Were"] also connotes a harkening back, an exploration of the self and the past. We’re interested in those words and works of art that are brave enough to cut through rank and time, presenting military experience honestly, free of the white-washing that can appear in today’s war literature and art. We’ve published numerous volumes since 2011, providing each contributor–regardless of whether that contributor has published 25 words or 25 books–with some form of one-on-one consultation if they wanted it.

As previously reviewed on the Red Bull Rising blog, the journal "As You Were" uniquely packages its submissions process as something akin to a virtual writing workshop. Unlike the thumbs-up-or-down approach of other journals, writers of all experience levels may engage in multiple drafts with peer editors and readers, while preparing pieces for publication. Regardless of whether a piece is accepted after one edit or many, however, the objective, however, is always the same: Help writers find new ways to document and communicate the military experience.

'As You Were' Now Open to Writing & Art Submissions

Editors at the literary journal "As You Were," published by the 501(c)3 non-profit organization Military Experience & the Arts, have opened the window for submitting poetry, fiction, and non-fiction until Aug. 14, 2017. Submissions will be considered for the journal's upcoming seventh issue, to be published FREE on-line in November 2017.

According to a website page describing the organization's publishing history and philosophy:

Our title ["As You Were"] also connotes a harkening back, an exploration of the self and the past. We’re interested in those words and works of art that are brave enough to cut through rank and time, presenting military experience honestly, free of the white-washing that can appear in today’s war literature and art. We’ve published numerous volumes since 2011, providing each contributor–regardless of whether that contributor has published 25 words or 25 books–with some form of one-on-one consultation if they wanted it.

As previously reviewed on the Red Bull Rising blog, the journal "As You Were" uniquely packages its submissions process as something akin to a virtual writing workshop. Unlike the thumbs-up-or-down approach of other journals, writers of all experience levels may engage in multiple drafts with peer editors and readers, while preparing pieces for publication. Regardless of whether a piece is accepted after one edit or many, however, the objective, however, is always the same: Help writers find new ways to document and communicate the military experience.

Military service members, veterans, family members, and others may submit writing and art. Works must previously unpublished, either in print or on-line, although they may be simultaneously submitted to other journals.

For poetry submissions guidelines, click here.

For fiction submissions guidelines, click here.

For non-fiction submissions guidelines, click here.

For visual arts submissions guidelines, click here.

Disclosure: The writer of the Red Bull Rising blog is also the poetry editor of "As You Were" literary journal.

Veterans Day Delivers Cornucopia of Literary Promise

In the United States, Veterans Day has become an annual center-mass for publishers of books and journals that regard military experience, personal history, and the relationship between our armed forces and our civil society. If you're in the market for some good reading over the upcoming U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, and into the New Year, however, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more target-rich environment. In fact, it can seem a little overwhelming.

In the spirit of many Red Bull briefings past, what follows is a quick once-around-the-world. Each of the following titles is notable, and worthy of further consideration and review. I look forward to doing my part—to further digest and disseminate these—in the coming weeks and months. That includes other military-focused titles or projects, too, such as those forthcoming from "War, Literature & the Arts" and "Drunken Boat."

Some of these listed publications appear on-line, some are print-only. Many, gloriously, are FREE. Regardless of cover price, however, I'd encourage you consume and to contemplate these words and pictures, and to consider making purchase or donations where possible. Veterans Lit is a community effort, and every little bit helps.

(Full disclosure; Careful readers will detect my own byline appearing in a few of these projects. While I'm very proud of that, I'll leave specific mentions for another day. Let us celebrate the group, not the individual.)

The on-line literary journal "Collatoral" recently published its inaugural edition. Created by students and staff at the University of Washington, Tacoma, the free publication features poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and art. "Collateral explores the perspectives of those whose lives are touched indirectly by the realities of military service," write the editors. "Numerous journals already showcase war literature, but we provide a creative platform that highlights the experiences of those who exist in the space around military personnel and the combat experience."

The 2016 fiction, non-fiction, and poetry anthology "Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors," Vol. 5 is available for $15 directly through Southeast Missouri State University Press here. Previous volumes are also available via the SEMO Press, as well as vendors such as Amazon:

• Volume 1
• Volume 2
• Volume 3
• Volume 4

West Virginia-based non-profit Military Experience & the Arts released its Fall-Winter issue of "As You Were," a FREE on-line collection of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and more from military service members, veterans, and family. The energy and purpose of the MEA is evident, I think, in the widening variety of voices and talents evident in these offerings. Some of the writers presented are well-seasoned, and confident in their aim. Others are just starting out, probing carefully into the gray light. All, however, are engaging their targets with precision, and moving out smartly to face the new.

Edited by "O-Dark Thirty" non-fiction editor Dario DiBattista, along with introduction by Veterans Writing Project founder Ron Capps, the newly published anthology "Retire the Colors" presents essays from 19 veterans, each exploring themes and experiences of homecoming. Want more info? Check out this book review from the always-insightful Andria Williams at the Military Spouse Book Review.

The Wisconsin-based Deadly Writers Patrol has released its eleventh issue of its literary magazine, which features fiction and poetry from military veterans of all eras. You can purchase your copy for $10 from the group's website here.

The non-profit Veterans Writing Project, Washington, D.C. recently released its Fall 2016 issue of its "O-Dark-Thirty" literary journal. Available FREE on-line here as a PDF, you can also subscribe to a print version here. Moving into its sixth year, Publisher Ron Capps promises that the journal will continue to tell stories of military experience through poetry, prose, interview, and art.

In introducing the latest issue, Capps writes: "We’ll be looking to publish works on a wider variety of subjects. Several times in the past we’ve published themed issues: the ghost issue, an all fiction issue, and a women’s writing issue. That will continue. This year’s theme will be 'identity.'" Capps also announces a VWP anthology project, planned for Fall 2017 release.

That's something, certainly, to which to look forward. Perhaps next Veterans Day?

'As You Were' Journal Re-opens to Poetry Submissions

Editors at the literary journal "As You Were," published by the 501(c)3 non-profit organization Military Experience & the Arts, have opened the window for submitting poetry until Sept. 1, 2016. Submissions will be considered for the journal's upcoming fifth issue, to be published FREE on-line in November 2016.

Windows for fiction, non-fiction, and visual arts submissions may also soon be reopened, as editors continue to work through a backlog of accepted work.

According to website page describing the organization's publishing history and philosophy:

Our title ["As You Were"] also connotes a hearkening back, an exploration of the self and the past. We’re interested in those words and works of art that are brave enough to cut through rank and time, presenting military experience honestly, free of the white-washing that can appear in today’s war literature and art. We’ve published numerous volumes since 2011, providing each contributor–regardless of whether that contributor has published 25 words or 25 books–with some form of one-on-one consultation if they wanted it.

As previously reviewed on the Red Bull Rising blog, the journal "As You Were" uniquely packages its submissions process as something akin to a virtual writing workshop. Unlike the thumbs-up-or-down approach of other journals, writers of all experience levels may engage in multiple drafts with peer editors and readers, while preparing pieces for publication. Regardless of whether a piece is accepted after one edit or many, however, the objective, however, is always the same: Help writers find new ways to document and communicate the military experience.

Military service members, veterans, and family members can submit from one to three poems here. Poems must be previously unpublished, either in print or on-line, although they may be simultaneously submitted to other journals.

Disclosure: The writer of the Red Bull Rising blog is also the poetry editor of "As You Were" literary journal.

Lit Journal 'As You Were' No. 4 Available FREE On-line

"Hunter or Hunted?" by Josh King. oil and pastel

The fourth and latest issue of the on-line literary journal "As You Were" lands today, Jun. 1, 2016, disgorging stories and art via the non-profit organization Military Experience & the Arts. The journal is published twice annually, and includes poetry, short stories, non-fiction, and visual art produced by veterans, family members, and others with connections to military service.

The journal can be read on-line for FREE here.

In the international "veterans lit" publishing space, the journal uniquely packages its submissions process as something akin to a virtual writing workshop. Unlike the thumbs-up-or-down approach of other journals, writers of all experience levels may engage in multiple drafts with peer editors and readers, while preparing pieces for publication. Regardless of whether a piece is accepted after one edit or many, however, the objective, however, is always the same: Help writers find new ways to document and communicate the military experience.

To do otherwise, as Frank Blake cautions in his poem "I Didn't Keep a Diary," runs risk of losing the war:

[…] The mission was accomplished
so we moved into an abandoned school house in between attacks
The war was young and our true enemy wasn’t born yet.
I sat down to write but how could I
the depth of a few weeks without running water made my memory too cloudy
I couldn’t recall the amazing detail I felt I needed
So I didn’t

"Camouflage" by Susan E. Kashmiri, 

mixed media on paper

The issue's fiction section delivers a wide range of images and voices. Not surprisingly, the stories often center on themes of loss and homecoming, and are driven by memorable and compelling characters. Seth Harp's "Jeremiad in Nuevo Laredo" tells the story of a possibly AWOL soldier motorcycling in Mexico, who encounters a prophet who sounds like something from a post-Apocalyptic fever dream. In "The Gadfly," Christopher Lyke tells of Eugene, a much-loved, good-natured Hoosier who suffers from a potentially terminal case of the hooahs:

He’d come to us straight out of basic training. And that had come directly after a lackluster four years in high school. He was light, and tough, and easily wore the smallest uniform in the platoon. Sometimes he’d ask out of the blue, "Sarn't, permission to smoke myself?" Then he’d jump to the ground and bang out fifty push-ups or mountain climbers and pop up laughing at the big joke and at being so hooah. His buddies were also super gung-ho and had a sense of humor about it too. They started copying him with the whole push-up thing when they felt like it. When he insisted on being on a gun team, his friends did, too.

Kyle Larkin's "The Night Before Christmas" introduces a background character who brings to life the careful routine of memorial services downrange. Consider this vignette:

I notice a young soldier setting everything up. He’s obviously done this before, and has a specific routine. He even looks bored as he brings out a green wooden stand, which I’m pretty sure was built specifically for these memorials, and stacks MRE boxes on top of it, which are probably the same boxes used for each ceremony, and then he covers this all with camouflage netting. He laces a brand new pair of boots and places them on the wooden stand in front of the boxes, adjusting them slightly until they are just right. He brings out a rifle and attaches a bayonet, clicking it into place. He turns the rifle upside down and sticks the bayonet into a pre-cut slot on one of the MRE boxes, confirming my guess that the same boxes are used each time. Then he pulls a set of dog tags out of his pocket and hangs them from the pistol grip of the rifle. A clean, new-looking helmet is placed on top of the stock. He walks away for a moment, and then comes back carrying a table with folded-up legs. He stands it up, sets a laptop on the surface, and attaches two small computer speakers with some wires. He looks at the screen, clicks a few times, and then walks away and lights up a cigarette.

It occurs to me that this might be his actual job. I want to ask him if there’s a closet where they store all of this stuff—a dead guy closet; and I want to ask him how it is that he got stuck doing this; if maybe he got suckered into the first couple ceremonies, but then they decided to just keep tasking it to him since he already knew how to do everything. I want to ask him how often he does this; if he wakes up and looks at his schedule and says, "Son of a bitch. Five memorials this week."

"Wall and Trench" by Seth L. Lombardi, digital

In non-fiction, the issue's offerings provide just as much drama and energy as the short fictions. In "Why Not Me?", essayist Howard B. Patrick provides a clear-eyed reflection on the vagaries of war, in which the author carefully interrogates more than a handful of times he or his soldier buddies should have been hurt or killed in Vietnam. Patrick's tone is neither boastful nor incredulous. Helicopters crashed. Duds impacted at their feet. On one patrol, Patrick writes:

During the night we heard noises all around us, but no voices. The flares were not tripped, and we didn’t see any movement on the trail, in the bushes, or in the trees behind us. I made sure every man maintained extra vigilance, with rifles ready and hands on the Claymore plungers, but told them not to detonate them unless we actually heard voices or saw movement.

Luckily, we never set off any of the Claymores, and in the morning we realized just how fortunate we were. The noises we heard were indeed the enemy – hoping we would set off our Claymores, because they had managed sneak up and turn them around to face us.

Patrick's titular question is as matter-of-fact as it is full of wonder. These things happened. And the worst did not. And neither luck nor God may have had anything to do with it.

In "Friendly Fire," Jim Bryson illuminates the uneasy relationships between an aircraft carrier's assigned crew and the itinerant air wing personnel that fly in and out of ship life. In the 1980s, Bryson was a supervisor of electrical shop charged with maintaining the catapult and arresting gear on U.S.S. Nimitz. His prose is full of grease and steam, and lands with a satisfying bump:

Imagine a thirty-ton jet crashing onto the deck, jerking a steel cable connected to a hydraulic piston below decks that absorbs the momentum of this massive bird plus the thrust of its engines raging for the sky. Failure to blast the engines can mean a quick dip into the sea. Jets sink fast and pilots are notoriously poor swimmers.

The good ones never miss. The bad ones forget they are fallible.

Disclosure: The writer of the Red Bull Rising blog is also the poetry editor of the journal "As You Were."

How Sherpa Wrote a Book: 'Welcome to FOB Haiku'

First of all, before you call out the Poetry Samurai (they're like the Grammar Ninja, but more figurative), let me say that, yes, I'm aware of the difference between haiku and senryu. Haiku is a three-line, 5-7-5-syllable Japanese-inspired poetic form regarding a moment in nature. Senryu is similarly structured—three lines, 5-7-5—but focuses on human foibles.

I write about the military. That roots me firmly in the human terrain. (In the U.S. Army, we brief all other forms of nature under "enemy situation.") So, technically, it would be more correct to say that I write senryu. I still call it "haiku," however, because I also know my audience. You don't need an M.F.A. to know what "haiku" is. Even the @#$%ing Infantry knows haiku.

Back in the day, we learned haiku in grade school. We also learned Robert Frost in junior high, and Shakespearian sonnets in high school. Fast-forward to today, and my Fifth-grade warrior-princess and Third-grade video game technician are both accomplished haiku practitioners. They also learned it in school. "All this has happened before, and all this has happened again."

Because people of all ages and abilities recognize the haiku form, it makes it both accessible and (pun intended) versatile. The best haiku deliver a surprise, a shift in the action or focus. Sometimes, it can be enough to surprise readers with the fact that they just read a poem—or that they learned something in grade school that's still useful.

Given the restrictions of haiku, I personally enjoy the technical challenge of finding just the right words and punctuation, to make my poetic shot-group as tight as possible. As a writer, I don't aspire to lyrical greatness—I want my language to be understandable. I want to entertain someone, and maybe get them to think about things in a different way.

I write for my buddies who don't read poetry, after all—guys who sometimes barely read the instructions to complicated things. That doesn't mean they're not open to new ideas, however, or to seeing old things in new light.

For example, I'm pretty sure that a couple of them will find this haiku, written about emplacing an anti-personnel Claymore, to be both familiar and fresh:

Point *this* side at Them.
Spool yourself away from harm.
Click three times and ... Boom.

After a couple of decades away from the practice—during which I wrote daily newspaper and how-to magazine and Army lessons-learned articles—I started writing poetry again in 2011. I was at a free weekend writing workshop on the campus of the University of Iowa, run by Emma Rainey and the non-profit Writing My Way Back Home.

The prompt had something to do about capturing a moment of wonder. I had been stewing for months, having earlier that year embedded with my former Army colleagues deployed to Afghanistan, about an interaction I'd had with my former commander while downrange. I kept wondering what it meant. Rainey gave us a few minutes to write, mental brakes off, with some soothing music playing in the background. I started writing about my first meeting downrange with Ryder-6. Ten minutes later, I had the start of a book.

I didn't realize that then, of course. It took years to admit I might be a poet. In the meantime, I still considered myself a just-the-facts non-fiction guy. Over the years, my journey was shaped and influenced by meeting many fellow travelers, such as poet Jason Poudrier ("Red Fields") at the first (and later, the second) Military Experience & the Arts Symposium.

I also met poet Suzanne Rancourt there—she of the sharp wit and long knives—who led by example and humor, and later convinced me to take over for her as the poetry editor for the group's literary journal, "As You Were." (FREE PDF of the latest issue here!)

At the 2012 Sangria Summit for writers of military fiction and non-fiction, held in Denver, Colo., I learned about independent and electronic publishing as methods to overcome obstacles to market—barriers such as having too narrowly focused a niche. Little did I realize how much of that information would factor into my actions in 2015. More on that in a minute.

I learned to use poetry to dig at the moments and memories that didn't quite make sense, or that didn't immediately seem to support a larger narrative. Sometimes, in my explorations, I found myself at the bottom of an intellectual hole. Sometimes, I found myself at the crest of a hill. Perhaps most importantly, I learned to accept the risks of sharing my work with others.

I started to get poems published in veteran-friendly venues, such as "The Pass in Review," "Line of Advance," the Veterans Writing Project's "O-Dark-Thirty," and the annual anthology series "Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors" from Southeast Missouri State University Press, Cape Girardeau, Mo.

Later, I began to get traction in non-military but Midwestern-themed outlets, such as the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library's "So It Goes" literary journal, and "Midwestern Gothic." Each of the above titles represents an editorial staff that is open to exploring ways to bridge the gap between civil and military experiences. We need more such bridge-builders.

Earlier this year, I found I had enough poems—published and unpublished—to produce a chapbook. I started to submit manuscripts to chapbook contests and publishers, recognizing that "light-hearted verse about the light infantry" is more of a rabbit- than a fox-hole—a niche within a niche within a niche. (I joke that I've finally discovered a vocation that pays less than newspaper journalist—that of "military poet.") Meanwhile, I added pages. The manuscript grew to book-length.

I began to realize that my poems, collected and curated, roughly reflected the narrative arc of my Army career, from Boot Camp to Bagram and back home again. The sum might be greater than its parts.

Having set a personal 2015 deadline for getting at least one major writing project off my desk, I published this month via Middle West Press LLC, Johnston, Iowa. This was the same entity that had, in 2011, endorsed my freelance media credentials when I applied to embed for a few weeks in Afghanistan. The result is a 90-page trade paperback, which is also available in various e-book formats, including the Amazon Kindle, and others via Smashwords.

The cover design of "Welcome to FOB Haiku" mimics the hardcopy Army doctrine and technical manuals we once shlepped to the field by the truckload: Matte finish. Subdued colors. Comforting and camouflaged. Theoretically fits in a cargo pocket, just like the brigade TACSOP.

The cover image is a pencil drawing by Aaron Provost, the original of which I proudly display in my undisclosed writing location. Long-time readers of the Red Bull Rising blog may remember my crush on the Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected ("M-RAP") trucks that epitomized so much of our country's thinking and tactics during Operation Enduring Freedom. I'm pleased to put that love on display. Even wrote a sonnet about it.

I continue to write haiku, while also working on my non-fiction muscles. A couple of pals from the Military Writers Guild and I are mutually resolved to make 2016 the year of non-fiction. On the Chinese Zodiac, it's also the year of the Monkey. That seems appropriate.

So stay tuned. And thanks for your continued readership. As always, I look forward to your questions, comments, insights, and now ... reader reviews?

Like the Red Bull says: "Attack! Attack! Attack!"

*****

You can buy "Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire" in print here and here. ($9.99 U.S.)

You can buy the e-book on Kindle here, or in a variety of e-book formats via Smashwords here. ($5.99 U.S.) More vendors to be listed soon!

War Poetry Potpourri and a Corn Belt Cornucopia

"You've been writing a lot about poetry lately," says Archer.

I know.

I guess you could say I'm writing what I know. Or what doing what I know. Which, this summer, is poetry. Also, comic books. And constructing foam-armor costumes with the Sherpa kids. It's summertime, after all, and we have a couple of weeks of "Camp Dad" on the calendar.

So, I've slowed down the blog a bit, shifted the frequency of posts to once a week.

Behind the blog-scene, I'm shopping to publishers and contests a manuscript of my own military-themed poetry, while also wrestling with the harder parts of that never-ending "Red Bull in Afghanistan" non-fiction project. I'm also ramping up to help out some of my veterans-lit buddies at Military Experience & the Arts with a larger, on-going editorial project. More on that in a future post.

Summer is here! That's Annual Training season!

Through press releases and social media, I've been watching members of the Minnesota National Guard's 1st Brigade Combat Team (B.C.T.), 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division (1-34th BCT) engage in a large-scale training event at Camp Ripley, Minn. They're getting ready for a 2016 rotation "in the box" at the National Training Center (N.T.C.), Fort Irwin, Calif. Meanwhile, members of the Iowa National Guard's 2-34th BCT are prepping for a rotation later this summer at Joint Readiness Training Center (J.R.T.C.), Fort Polk, La. "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again."

Good times, good times ...

That reminds me: I should write a humorous essay titled "Ways that Camp Dad is like Annual Training." Something akin to that time I compared/contrasted working in a Tactical Operations Center and working in a daycare. It seems to me that I haven't been bringing the funny much lately. 

Unless you're talking poetry, of course. Which I am. No big surprise here, but the stuff I write usually tends toward the humorous. Even with all the summer household chaos and logistics, I've had some recent good fortune in getting my work out there and published.

One recent arrival is The Corn Belt Almanac, a cornucopia full of essays, fiction, poetry, recipes, fun facts, and other good stuff about agriculture—about how and what we eat.

The almanac is the third such project from The Head & The Hand Press, a small press located in Philadelphia, Penn. Previous years brought about 2013's The Rust Belt Almanac (on themes of urban renewal) and 2014's The Asteroid Belt Alamanac (on themes regarding science and space). Writers, take note: There's also soon to be an open call for The Bible Belt Almanac, to be published in 2016. Editors will be looking for work regarding religion and philosophy.

You can buy The Corn Belt Almanac here. The 116-page journal not only includes "10 haiku about a state fair," written by the writer of the Red Bull Rising blog, but also a recipe for "Kick-@$$ Corn" from Household-6! It's also chock-full of literary goodness!

But what's the connection to military writing, Sherpa?

Well, an early draft of "10 haiku …" did include one about military recruiters working at a state fair. That, however, grew into its own, non-haiku work. It hasn't yet been published.

There's also probably something grand and theoretical to be said about the natural evolution of artist- and writer-veterans. At some point, we each have to be open to considering topics other than war. At some point, we each might drop the hyphenated "-veteran." (Heck, some might even call that "reintegration" into civilian life.)

More directly, however, I first came across The Head & The Hand Press when reviewing Adrian Bonenberger's 2014 memoir "Afghan Post." They're a hardworking and creative "craft publisher"—check out their "community-supported" business model, for example—and bring a lot to our collective literary table.

Friendly reminder: You can buy Bonenberger's book through Amazon, your local bookseller, or direct from the publisher.

In other war poetry news, fellow Military Writers Guild member Mikhail Grinberg recently wrote a two-part review and interview with self-published war poet Stanton S. Coerr's 2013 collection "Rubicon". Coerr is a former Marine attack-helicopter driver, and he has some good things to say in person and in print.

I commend both the review and the interview to you, although I think that modern military-themed poetry has a larger footprint than either writer suggests. Does it enjoy the same reach and financial success as the latest summer blockbuster? Probably not. But it's doing important stuff, and there's a market for it. Grinberg's review personally influenced me, for example, to seek out and purchase Coerr's work.

I've also taken the liberty of adding Coerr's work to my "Mother of All 21st Century War Poetry Lists," which was first posted last April, and now appears as a static page on the Red Bull Rising blog.

"Attack! Attack! Attack!"

Post-Memorial Day Round-Up on Mil-Writing

One of the movers-and-shakers I met recently at Military Experience & the Arts Symposiusm 2 (M.E.A.2.) in Lawton, Okla. was spoken-word artist, editor, and impresario Kylila Bullard, who's particularly interested in telling the stories of female West Point cadets.

She's written up her own take of the MEA2 event, which I invite you to read at her own blog, "Poetic Change." She heads a non-profit of the same name. A Facebook page for the organization is here.

Keep an ear out for her stuff. I know I will.

I was also pleased to meet former corpsman and sailor Travis Klempan, who is now a writer and poet based in Colorado. On Memorial Day, the Ash & Bones on-line literary journal published Klempan's short story "Commit to the Deep." It's a great read, and perfect for navigating the discomforts and internal conflicts of Memorial Day.

Also on the virtual table-of-contents was a poem from Eric Chandler.  Chandler is a former F-16 driver for the Minnesota Air National Guard (Callsign: "Shmo"), and an outdoors enthusiast and writer in Duluth, Minn. who now flies commercial passenger aircraft. His poem "Maybe I Should've Lied" wonderfully captures the uneasy phase lines over which citizen-soldiers must cross when talking with and around their children. The poem and the situation it describes resonated greatly with me, as did Shmo's snarky internal monologue.

That it was also published on Memorial Day, I think, is both provocative and appropriate.

The editors of Ash & Bones, Andrea Collins and Katie Kuss-Shivler, are to be commended and thanked for their literary coverage of military themes. In three recent waves or "cycles" of on-line content, they've presented a compelling mix of poetry and short fiction. (You can read that military content here and here.)

These are stories of military experience, ranging from the mundane to the profane, from the subversive and the sublime. They also share a great eye for pairing images—often copyright-free images from modern military journalists—with literary words. When artist- and writer-veterans talk about ways to build bridges across the gaps of understanding between civilians and military service members and families, it's content like this for which we should be aiming: Punchy. Loving. Unsentimental.

(Disclosure: The writer of the Red Bull Rising blog had two poems—here and here—appear in the journal's second cycle.)

The Ash & Bones publication is moving on to consider other, non-military topics important to our society and culture. I hope, however, that they revisit military themes in the future. In the meantime, I'll borrow a page from the Navy signals book and transmit a "Bravo Zulu" to all those involved.

*****

I SAY AGAIN: JUNE 1, 2015 DEADLINES FOR TWO IMPORTANT JOURNALS

Military writers, take note! Two noteworthy print journals have deadlines for short fiction, non-fiction, poetry, visual art, interviews, and more coming up on June 1:

First is "Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors" from Southeast Missouri State University Press, an annual anthology now in its fourth year.

Second is the annual journal "Consequence," which covers literature regarding the culture of war.

Like the Red Bull says: "Attack! Attack! Attack!"

In other words, keep writing! And keep sending out submissions!

Notes from a Veterans-in-the-Arts Symposium

MEA2 event organizer Jason Poudrier, MEA founding president Travis L. Martin, and
current MEA president David. P. Ervin celebrate a successful veterans-in-the-arts
symposium  conducted May 14-17, 2015 at Cameron University, Lawton, Okla.
PHOTO: Military Experience & the Arts

More than 100 military veterans, writers, artists, scholars, therapists, and others assembled in the second Military Experience & the Arts Symposium (M.E.A.2.) May 14-17, 2015. The event was held at Cameron University, Lawton, Okla., near the Fort Sill military installation. Participants attended nearly 75 workshops, performances, meet-ups, and seminars on the communication of military experiences through expressive arts, including music, writing, dance, painting, and more.

The first such event was held 2012 in Richmond, Ky. Each symposium has been under the banner of Military Experience & the Arts, a Kentucky-based non-profit organization.

News reports about the event included this broadcast from ABC affiliate KSWO-TV Channel 7: "Veterans Create, Display Art." (See text, video at link.)

The Cameron campus was lush and green, the dirt red, and the weather relatively cool and blustery. (Wind conditions kept me off the on-campus disc golf course.) The region has gotten plenty of rain this year, and flash flood concerns were often as high as local waterways. Some friends from Wisconsin had to find hotel rooms at the last minute, after the cabin they'd reserved on Fort Sill turned about to be high and dry, but surrounded by a moat impassible to anything but tactical vehicles.

Still, to update that old Army saying about the weather and training: "If it's raining, we're still painting!"

While it was impossible to participate in every workshop or experience, I hope the following notes provide some sense of the talents and topics available at MEA2.

DAY 1:

Saw lots of friends from MEA1. Met friends I didn't know I knew already. ("Who I am depends on who you are and where we are ...") Met entirely new friends. Even friends who'd said they'd gotten published via venues identified at the Red Bull Rising blog. Oklahoma, in short, is a very friendly place. 

In the evening, former Marine and poet Suzanne Rancourt read from her work in a theater setting, and made me cry. And then, former Marine Roman Baca's Exit 12 Dance Company took the stage, and performed a ballet about motherhood and separation and deployment. They also made me cry. 

When the lights went up, the mother who commissioned/choreographed the piece was suddenly in the audience, as well as one of her two sons, who is stationed at nearby Fort Sill. And later, the troupe re-purposed a dance to an impromptu Native American flute performance by Albert Gray Eagle. 

"Magic" does not adequately describe all this.

DAY 2:

Made DIY comic books with Steve Gooch and Marc DiPaolo of Oklahoma City University, then learned about contemplative photography from Buddhist and Army veteran Tif Holmes from the non-profit Engage the Light of Lubbock, Texas. 

Wrote about the homefront through prompts suggested by Amber Jensen of South Dakota State University, a writer and Army National Guard family member, whom I first met back at Great Plains Writers' Conference 2014. 

Then, dinner with the jazz musicians of 77th Army Band ("The Pride of Fort Sill!"), followed by provoking insights about Military Sexual Trauma issues from Miette Wells, Phd., an Air Force veteran. 

Finally, video presentation from Ben Patton, grandson of WWII Gen. George S. Patton, and founder of "I Was There" Film Workshops. The latter uses digital film-making as a collaborative therapeutic intervention for people diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. 

So much energy here! So many sparks!

DAY 3:

Got the gouge on self-publishing from MEA president David P. Ervin (author of "Leaving the Wire: An Infantryman's Iraq"), then learned about flash non-fiction techniques from Rob Roensch of Red Earth MFA in Creative Writing at OCU. 

After lunch, Tara Leigh Tappert of The Arts and the Military blew my mind by academically connecting the Arts & Crafts movement with the origins of occupational therapy as a profession, and the establishment of craft shops U.S. military installations in the '50s, '60s, and '70s. Scholarship like that puts veterans and arts organizations such as MEA into historical context. "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again." 

Evening performances included readings of flash fiction by Veterans Writing Project Managing Editor Jerri Bell (from whom I learned lots of new sailor slang. Household-6 will be very pleased), and physical comedy (Masks! Mime! Puppets! Juggling!) from Hoosier Doug Berky. Berky's re-telling of the Korean fable, "The Tiger's Whisker," is a family-friendly tale of one family's journey of healing from PTSD. I hope to invite him to Iowa someday.

Bottom line: The Military Experience & the Arts Symposium 2 provided a unique opportunity to exchange insights on expressive arts techniques, tools, scholarship, advocacy, and healing on veterans issues—and encouraged veterans, students, educators, and arts practitioners to try new things.

Godspeed, and God bless! I can't wait to see what happens next!

'As You Were' Posthumously Publishes 'Red Bull' Poem

Just a week before the second-ever Military Experience & the Arts Symposium—this one, to be held May 14-17 at Cameron University, Lawton, Okla.—the Kentucky-based non-profit has released a second volume of the rebranded literary journal "As You Were." The 156-page publication is now available FREE as a downloadable PDF here.

The publication notably includes a "Once Again to Be a Little Boy," a poem written by Dillion Naslund, 25, and posthumously published at the request of his parents, Lisa and Jeff Naslund of Galva, Iowa.

Dillion Naslund died of a self-inflicted gunshot Dec. 10, 2012. He had deployed as an infantry soldier to Iraq in 2007-2008. He had also returned from a 9-month deployment to Eastern Afghanistan's Laghman Province in July 2011. Back home, in addition to being the member of a close family, he was active in the local fire department, and worked a concrete construction job.

The poem reads, in part:

[...] For we all are proud to have suffered this burden together, alone
It’s a priceless honor you can’t get without being selfless
It will never be found priced together amongst low budget electronics or twenty-one flavors of ice cream [...]

Dillion was a former member of the Iowa National Guard's 1st Battalion, 168th Infantry Regiment (1-168th Inf.) and 1st Battalion, 133rd Infantry Regiment (1-133rd Inf.). Both are units of Iowa's 2nd Brigade Combat Team (B.C.T.), 34th Infantry "Red Bull" Division.

"Dillion had felt he was alone," his mother Lisa told the Red Bull Rising blog in 2013, "but we quickly found out that he wasn't." In the days and weeks following his December 2012 funeral, she said, more than a handful of other soldiers have independently contacted her family. They told her that Dillion's example had inspired each to seek help in their own struggles. "Dillion's legacy can be to save lives," she says. "He's already saved lives."

Through efforts such as Operation Engage America, and the 2013 television documentary "Dillion," the Naslunds have been active in promoting awareness and education regarding veteran suicides.

In February 2015, the Naslunds were interviewed by Military Experience & the Arts president David P. Ervin. Read the article here.

A webpage for Operation Engage America is here.

A Facebook page is here.

On June 20, 2015, the group plans activities in Des Moines, Iowa and San Diego, Calif. A Facebook page for the Des Moines event is here.

*****

The Veterans Crisis Line is a toll-free and on-line resource staffed by trained Department of Veterans Affairs personnel, who can confidentially assist soldiers, veterans, families and friends toward local help and resources.

According to the Veterans Crisis Line website:

1-800-273-8255 and Press 1, chat online, or send a text message to 838255 to receive confidential support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Support for deaf and hard of hearing individuals is available.